Here’s The Thing About “Porn Sex” vs “Real Sex”

There are some headlines that come up over and over again in sex world and one that makes my skin crawl is “The Difference Between Porn Sex and Real Sex” (and variations on that theme). Let’s talk about “porn sex”, shall we? Look, I know, porn is incredibly prevalent. Sites like PornDoe make it super-simple to find the sex you want to see when you want to see it. I also know that at this moment in time when kids don’t have nearly enough access to comprehensive sex education and more access than ever to streaming internet porn it is more than understandable that folks are concerned that those kids might believe their sex lives are supposed play out exactly like what they see on the screen, with hair-free women fawning over super-endowed men, no one stopping to discuss safety or boundaries, no lube or condoms to be seen, and compulsory anal sex that is as easy as riding a bike. It is important that folks know bodies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, that sex can be messy, inelegant, and often kind of hilarious, and that over-the-top screaming orgasms don’t just happen every time…

Are you sensing the “but” that’s coming? Yeah, I’m going there, I’m dropping a “but” into this conversation, here goes:

BUT we have to stop with the “porn sex vs ‘real’ sex” argument. Yes, it’s true pornography can feature impressive feats of sexual athleticism that few are capable of (ie across-the-room squirting), uniformly hairless bodies, and endless stamina. Yes, it’s totally valuable to help folks remember that their at-home sex may not look like porn any more than their day at the beach looks like Baywatch but we really need to be careful with painting porn sex as not “real” sex, of casting it as an absurd “no one REALLY does that” version of sex, of implying that there is something inherently wrong with enjoying activities that happen in pornography.

I often refrain from talking about my own personal sex life here but today I’m going to break that moratorium because I feel ways about this. The thing is, my sexual preferences skew toward the porn-esque end of the spectrum. Intense, extended fellatio, intercourse that could be described with words like “hard”, “deep”, and “pounding”, and a particular favorite thing that I realized sex world had no specific name for, leaving me to ask a friend to create one:

Important sex announcement: @katecom has declared the act of coming on another person to be called "frosting". So shall it be.

I don’t talk about this often because I’ve heard enough arguments about sexual preferences and the influences of porn that my imagination has cooked up a frightening litany of responses that sharing this information would bring: Speculation that my sexual tastes are influenced by what I see in porn (Which, funnily, I don’t really watch. I’m more of an erotica girl.), accusations that I’m just doing what my (exclusively male) partners find hot, because of porn (I know how “I like sucking dick, getting fucked really hard, and then having my partner come all over me” sounds), and revocation of my sex positive feminist status (shouldn’t I be taking charge and pegging the patriarchy?!).

Now, realistically I know none of that is true but here’s the thing, I read and write and talk about all of this stuff for a living and I am still hesitant because I can imagine those responses. What might it be like for someone without my knowledge base who hears folks talk about how the very things they enjoy aren’t “real” sex? Pretty horrible, I suspect. Possibly the kind of thing that makes people deny what they are into and settle for less pleasure than they could be having. Why would we do this? What happened to not yucking each other’s yums? (more on that next week).

So, when you are tempted to talk about “real” sex vs porn take a second, think about what you mean (“use lube”? “communicate”? “body hair is totally natural”? “don’t ram your dick forcefully in any orifice without being explicitly asked to”?) and say that instead. Just as there is no shame in having sex that looks nothing like porn, there should be none in having sex that resembles it.

This post contains a link sponsored by PornDoe. The opinions in it are, as always, my own.